Spotify's Incentives and Industry Milestones

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• Spotify is wooing some potential video creators with promises of free ad money. Natalie Jarvey of The Ankler published a leaked Spotify deck; and one slide shows an incentive of $5,000 of free ad credits within Spotify Ads Manager to help eligible new video creators to promote their shows. Spotify often highlights that many creators see a growth in consumption after adding video: but it hasn’t mentioned that it gives $5,000 of free ads to drive that consumption increase.
• Today, June 26, marks the thirteenth anniversary of the launch of the Apple Podcasts iOS app in 2012. The app featured a faux reel-to-reel tape deck, apparently a nod to the Braun TG 60 tape recorder by Dieter Rams. In the Apple Podcasts app, speed controls were marked with a tortoise and a hare; and promotion for This American Life on the editorially-curated “featured” section. The app also featured a “Top Stations” discovery feature. Here’s a video from CTTechJunkie showing how the app worked; a positive review from Revision3; and this demo from GetConnected Media which shows how the “Top Stations” feature worked: with an audio/video switch right at the top. Hey, there’s an idea...
  • It’s the twentieth anniversary of podcasts going into iTunes on Saturday.
• 86% of Gen Z listen to music or consume podcasts ​to help boost their mood, according to a new study. The Gen Z Report, from Edison Research and SiriusXM Media, says that 13-24 year-olds are most concerned with the economy, social injustice and political division. 8% of their audio time is spent with podcasts; they discover podcasts most-often by “searching on YouTube”.

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